Sam the Manly Man & Avery is 2!

The big 2! I can't believe how big she is! She is becoming the sweetest little girl. So kind and caring. The only time she throws big tantrums is when we tell her to hop in bed, and she hasn't given Sammy a kiss goodnight yet. She always smothers him with love (a.k.a. her blankie) and tries to share her favorite foods (pretzels and goldfish) with him.



Sam has started smiling and cooing. I love it and it sure makes motherhood much more rewarding when they smile! I'm not sure how to shorten this video, but the good parts are starting at :45, and at 1:48 is the nice surprise. I would've stopped it at 2:35 if I'd known how to edit videos.



At the hospital, we were still trying to decide on a name for Sam. The staff always made signs to put on the babies' little beds, so Nathan told the hospital staff that we were going to name him "Wernicke." He told them he was kidding, but it kinda became this joke between them and us. Well, I went to visit Sam in the nursery and was admiring him, and the other cute boys on both sides of him with adorable names: Ethan and Joseph. Then, I looked at his big name tag that the nurses had made: Wernicke. After seeing that, I quickly became very embarrassed, and hoped that the two dads standing in front of little Ethan and Joseph weren't paying attention to Sam's name tag. :)



Sam has started to recognize his fist, and also scratches his face much less than before.


Sam is a manly man, as you can see above. As I was changing his outfit one day, I asked Nathan to get my hairbrush. The rest is self-explanatory. I couldn't resist. :) Hehehe.


Nathan took Avery to a cemetery for Memorial Day. There was a 21-rifle salute, which fascinated her (aside from the initial shock of the first loud gunshot). She also "said" the pledge-of-allegiance for the first time, which meant saying the last word of each phrase as Nathan whispered it to her in advance. :)


Daddy's girl on Sam's blessing day (at least I think it was on Sam's blessing day)!




In-N-Out for Sarah's (Nathan's sister) graduation. Avery had fun with the hat.


This is our last interfaith dialogue while we live in Utah. It was with Asuza Pacific from Southern California. I wasn't able to participate in this one because Sam was only 2 weeks old, and I was very, very tired. I went to bed at like 7 pm that night and let Nathan play host -- which he did a very good job at. He even handled the emergency we-ran-out-of-pizzas situation while being able to join different discussion groups throughout the evening.



Avery's version of the Hokey Pokey.


Avery and Nathan went swimming. It had been over a year since Avery went swimming last, but she seemed to remember he floaty penguin when I got it out. She loved it! It took her awhile to warm up to the idea of getting her hair wet, but after Nathan helped her dip her head in a few times, that's all she wanted to do!


To all you moms out there, I walked into my room last month to find this:



I'll eventurally remove these three pics from the blog, so no one can blackmail her in the future. I assume only the moms who read this blog will know what she's doing, right? :)



Avery blew out one candle on her own. Grandma tried to help. Thank goodness grandpa came to the rescue! :)


Avery loves to play in the dryer.



Nathan's school went fishing on a cold morning in May, so I got to take Sam and Avery along. Last year, Avery was afraid of the fishies. This year she warmed up to them and was intrigued by the men at the table who were gutting the fish. She kept saying, "Fish cut, blood." It was great to see how she didn't grossed out by any of it.



We're moving to Arizona at the end of June, and we found a great rental house with plenty of bedrooms . It even has a backyard (and front yard) with grass in it -- rare for Yuma. We're sad to leave the rain, mountains, and greenery of Utah, but we're excited to meet new people and for Nathan to start a new job. This will probably be my last post for awhile, seeing as things are crazy hectic right now in preparing for the move.

Until Arizona!